About The Book
Slim Spaniards Eat Six Times a Day invites the reader to be immersed in the culinary traditions of a real Spanish home.
Hear the auctioneer’s voice soaring above the din of fisherman and fishmonger’s as they size up the morning’s catch in a Mediterranean port. Come sit in the living room and eavesdrop on the gentle flamenco singing coming from the kitchen. Later, join in the arguing about how the food should be prepared using traditional family recipes. Sit at the table plainly set for the meal. Hear the chairs scrape the floor. Feel the fierce and brief silence when everyone lifts a spoon or fork and begins to eat the main meal of the day. Enjoy the feeling of this rich experience through narrative, humour, photography, drawings, and song.
Be warned though; this is not a romantic tale of landed gentry who don costumes to dance flamenco after lunch in the worst of the mid-day heat!
Through three generations of a hard working family we experience how in Spain, food purchased with care, prepared and eaten at home is the bedrock of dignity every day.
In Slim Spaniards Eat Six Times a Day, Céline Bak with her husband Spanish historian Antonio Cazorla-Sanchez set out a family culinary autobiography. They take this sometimes funny personal point of departure to write about the place of food in the lives of Spaniards. She is a North American business person who has lived in Spain and worked in the UK. He is a professor of Spanish Twentieth Century History who has come from Andalusia to North American academia. She creates the bridge between one Spanish family and Spanish families generally by exploring social trends. This contemporary narrative is set it in the rich context of the 3,000 years of food history on Iberian Peninsula, of food since the end of the Spanish Civil war and during the last 27 years since democracy was restored.
Spanish food is fashionable; there is a reason for that. It is fabulous and Spanish chefs are world-leading innovators. But that does not change the relationship between Spaniards and the singular place of food in their lives. Food comes only second to family for Spaniards, be they richer, poorer, educated or less so. Readers of Slim Spaniards Eat Six Times a Day will be all the richer when they read just why, nothing comes between Spaniards and the time and care they dedicate to food.